Universal Intelligence (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 16:55 (5540 days ago) @ George Jelliss

George: This is not a question of having faith in anything. [...] The evidence for a material universe is overwhelming.-I don't think even the most devout theist would deny that there is a material universe! What requires faith is the theory that "chance can put together the ingredients for reproduction, life, consciousness, emotion etc." According to you the evidence for this being the case is overwhelming, though you prefer to call the agent "natural causes" rather than chance. Yes, of course you do. "Natural causes", with a tiny concession of "in general", sounds far more rational and scientific than "chance". If something is natural, how can anyone dispute it? Presumably the fact that natural things happen in nature is also what constitutes your "overwhelming" evidence, since no-one has yet provided any scientific proof of the theory.-I wrote that you had closed your mind to any evidence that might support the god theory. You reply that you have considered the "theory" and found it wanting. You have finalized your position, and of course I accept that, and tried to indicate in my post that this was simply a statement of fact to differentiate between your position and mine.-I attacked Dawkins' statement that "Evolution is the creator of life". In response you have quoted his thesis that life starts with "primeval simplicity and fosters, by slow, explicable degrees, the emergence of complexity." That is not the point at issue. He claims in the same article, which you recommended: "We know, as certainly as we know anything in science, that [Darwinian evolution] is the process that has generated life on our own planet." I object to a renowned scientist claiming that evolution created/generated life. I am not, as you put it, claiming the "improbability or impossibility" of the first appearance of a replicating molecule, and you know perfectly well that I'm not. I too believe that it happened. But it was not produced by Darwinian evolution. Darwinian evolution had nothing to work on until there was already life. That is what makes Dawkins' statement absurd. Secondly, however, what you virtually brush aside as the "primeval simplicity of a replicating molecule" is something so complex that even our modern scientists are unable to reproduce it, and that is why I am sceptical that it could have come about by chance. Thirdly ... a point which time and again you refuse to accept ... there would have been no evolution if those first molecules had not contained within themselves the potential for future variation, thus adding to their complexity. This is not "a step". It's the very foundation of everything that followed. Fourthly, as I indicated with my references to consciousness, emotion etc., I'm not convinced that chance is capable of assembling the ingredients that can lead to such phenomena.-Lastly, I am not "postulating" the intervention of a designer. I do not believe in chance, which you would prefer to cloak as "natural causes", and I am prepared to consider (not postulate) an equally irrational alternative. If there is a universal intelligence, it would certainly exercise its willpower, though I don't know how. I don't even understand the nature of my own will. But of course I will forgive you if you laugh. I'm only surprised that your sense of humour does not extend to the idea of chance assembling a self-replicating organic computer.